Poison Mushroom: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

An item which harms the player who picks it up or uses it instead of helping them. Differs from [[Power-Up Letdown]] in that the harm it causes is direct and intentional, rather than from a design flaw.

 

{{examples}}

* Several games in the ''[[Castlevania]]'' series had, alongside the usual food items used to restore health, several rotten food items like "Rotten Meat" and "Spoiled Milk". In ''[[Dawn of Sorrow]]'', equipping a Ghoul soul allowed Soma to eat them safely. After which, against logic, they would heal full heath- apparently, to a ghoul, spoiled milk is more nutritious than an entire turkey is to a human.

** The Flesh Golem soul had the same effect in the previous game, ''Aria of Sorrow''. It's a kind of [[Inverted Trope|inversion]] of [[Revive Kills Zombie]].

 

 

* The ''[[Bomberman]]'' series has the Skull item, which, when picked up, will temporarily give the player a randomly chosen negative effect, such as inability to drop bombs, slow motion, invisibility (worse than you might think), and a few others. There is a small silver lining, however; you can share the effects of the Skull item with another player by touching him or her.

** Though this is VERY dependent on the individual game's list of possible effects, getting the skull could be a GOOD thing. In ''Bomberman 64'', the effects were split 50/50 good to bad, for example, one possible outcome was you would instantly get full power bombs (with blue super sized explosions.) Another one set you on fire, making you able to kill anyone by touching them... but you'd have to move quick cause you would burn to death eventually. Another made you absolutely tiny, but super fast.

 

 

* In ''[[Gobliiins]]'', many items Dwayne can pick up will harm him and make him lose some of the energy bar. Sometimes, he will ''deliberately strike himself with the object''.

* An old ''[[The Addams Family]]'' game, ''Fester's Quest'' for the NES, had red power downs for your gun and whip, as well as the blue powerups.

 

 

* The old Capcom beat-em-up ''Tiger Road'' had you regain health from gourds. Some gourds cost you health instead of restoring it; these could be identified by one feature - they were upside-down.

 

 

* Fake Item Boxes in [[Mario Kart 64|Mario Kart 64 and beyond]] do about the same thing as Poison Mushrooms, whereas the normal item boxes are rainbow-colored or bluish and have a "?" while a fake one will be red and have a "¿". Both blocks look exactly the same from a distance (the fake one changing when you get closer), but most players can avoid them by memorizing where real items boxes should appear. The [[Trope Namer]] itself appears in the SNES original. The boxes can also be detected, at least in the DS version, by checking the game map. The fake ones appear different than the regular ones.

** The Wii game had a storm cloud item. It floated over your head, charging up lightning. If you didn't give it away by hitting somebody else in time, it would electrocute and shrink you.

 

 

* In ''[[Super Smash Bros.]] Melee'' and ''Brawl'', Super Mushrooms made your character grow, while Poison Mushrooms made you shrink. The latter could be identified from the former by a slightly darker color and a slightly meaner expression, with the outer corners of the Poison Mushroom's eyes turned [[Tsurime Eyes|upward]] rather than [[Tareme Eyes|downward]]. However, this difference may not be obvious when the camera is zoomed out enough.

** In ''Melee'' both mushrooms turn into question marks when you pause, meaning you can't "cheat" to identify them either.

 

 

* ''[[Deus Ex]]'' lets you smoke and drink booze. Smoking whittles away at your health, while the booze blurs your screen and sways your view for a time. While nothing forces the player to try either booze or cigarettes, the assumption that these droppable items must have some actual ''use'' may draw naive souls in...

** If you're hurt, you can find a safe spot, down beer, wine and/or liquor, and recover some health (it works like any other food item), and just wait for the effects of blurred vision and swaying screen to go away (it's also explained that your nano-machines make you go through the effects of drunkenness much faster than a normal human as well).

 

 

* The ''[[Civilization]]'' series (and many subsequent generations of turn-based strategy game) feature the so-called "Goody Huts" - old dwellings unaffiliated with any faction that, when explored, may turn out to contain scrolls of ancient knowledge, secret treasures, nomads or tribespeople who are sick of living in the ruins... or a barbarian hideout that is none too thrilled with your intrusion.

** ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'' contains similar terrain features that are supposedly escape pods from the crashed starship. Could have personnel, could have recoverable tech data, could have a map of local metal deposits, could have [[Face Full of Alien Wingwong|helminthoid parasitic mindworms that attack your troops and psychically prey upon their minds before ripping apart their]] [[Nightmare Fuel|AAAAAAA GET IT OFF MEEEE...]]

* ''[[Colonization]]'' version of "goody huts" is "Lost City Rumours". These marked squares are unusable until explored. When an European unit enters, the result is random: [[Inexplicable_Treasure_Chests|Treasure Train]], modest gift from a small friendly tribe, lost Free Colonist happy to join you, Fountain of Youth (an instant crowd of eager immigrants), nothing ("it was just so: a rumour"), an [[Indian Burial Ground]] for disturbing which natives attack, or the scouting unit simply vanishes - with horses and all. Skilled scouts get better chances of good results, and one Founding Father bonus disables negative results. Of course, if you wait too long for improving chances, other European side may walk in and take the gamble.

 

* The various ''[[Gauntlet (1985 video game)]]'' games have poison and Death hiding in treasure chests identical to food and potion chests. It's impossible to tell which is which without opening them. ''Gauntlet II'' had poisoned cider and poisoned blue potions. Shooting either of them would cause enemies to slow down. There was also "IT", which chased down a player and bonded to him or her, causing enemies to follow them. The IT effect persisted throughout the level and can only be mitigated by tagging another player ("Tag, you're IT!"), which simply passed the effect to that player.

** The upgraded ''Gauntlet: Legends'' and its sequel, ''Gauntlet: Dark Legacy'', avert this somewhat with the X-Ray Glasses power-up, which allow you to see what the chest contains; even without the Glasses, observant players will quickly notice that if a chest is shaking and jumping, it very likely contains Death. In any case, each chest location holds the same type of power-up every time, allowing the wise player to avoid opening harmful or useless chests on replay.

 

 

* ''[[Lady Bug]]'' had skulls scattered around the maze with the dots and other pickups. Running into a skull would lose a life for the player, but skulls were just as deadly to the enemies. There were more skulls on later levels than earlier ones.

 

 

* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' has a series of potions that are a clear reference to these sorts of items. Their effects are mapped to specific potions differently for each person and each ascension, so they're risky until you've got them mapped out - especially if you hit the one that increases drunkenness while you're one point away from your limit (which makes you unable to continue adventuring) and have more than the rollover cap worth of adventures left.

** It also has "goofballs". It enhances your skills for a 10 turns, after which it penalizes your character by weakening him for the next 100 turns ("goofball withdrawal"). Only way to avert the penalty? Take more goofballs. And the price of the goofballs? First one's free. Subsequent ones ramp up in price exponentially. And subsequent consumption also causes lost of stat to boot. The moral? [[Drugs Are Bad]].

 

 

* Likewise, the ''[[Mario Party]]'' series used to have Black Stars (called Ztars in ''Mario Party 5'') which would reduce your number of stars. Bowser loves giving these out. Extra points if you actually paid for them.

 

 

* The [[Trope Namer]] here is the Poison Mushroom from the ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'' series, a subtle [[Palette Swap]] of the iconic Super Mushroom. They first appeared in the Japanese ''Super Mario Bros. 2'' (known in the United States as ''[[Super Mario Bros the Lost Levels|The Lost Levels]]''), where picking one up was the same as touching an enemy.

** The SNES release of "The Lost Levels" made the poison mushrooms a completely and totally unmistakable solid purple with a skull on the cap of the mushroom and gave them angry eyes. If you still picked one of these up, [[Too Dumb to Live|you deserved it]].

* The videogame adaptation of ''[[The Blues Brothers]]'' movie has broken vinyl records that reset the number of records you have collected to zero.

 

* Pacman-like game ''Zoom!'' had a question mark powerup, which could randomly give you points, skip you to the next level, or kill you outright.

* The fairly unimportant '96 Breakout clone named ''Twinblok'' had a powerup that temporarily transformed all balls on the field into tennis balls. They turned completely harmless to blocks and the sudden change in their behavior was often lethal, since you were still obligated to keep at least one in play.

 

 

* The freeware [[Worms]]-esque ''[[Liero]]'' features a weapon called the Booby Trap, which creates land mines disguised as medikits. They could be distinguished from the real thing because they didn't bounce like the real powerups did.

* ''[[Command & Conquer]]: Red Alert'' has crates that explode and cause damage when picked up.

 

 

* In [[Roguelike]] games like ''[[Nethack]]'' and ''Crawl'', what the different magic items look like varies from one game to the next, so (for example) in one game a square amulet is an Amulet of Lifesaving, while in the next game a square amulet is a cursed Amulet of Strangulation. Part of mastering the game is developing tactics to discover which items are bad without killing yourself.

** ''Nethack'' also brings us the loadstone, an object which weighs an obscene amount (more than some characters' suits of armor) but if picked up cannot be dropped unless you cast an uncurse spell on it (and it automatically re-curses itself if you pick it up again). Of course, it looks just like two moderately useful other items when unidentified, and magical identification only works on items you're carrying. . .

 

 

* In the ''[[Star Ocean]]'' series, item creation often yields items like this, especially to begin with. One particularly annoying example is the Bounced Cheque in ''[[Star Ocean the Second Story]]'', which continually drains your party's money until you get rid of it, which costs money to do since you can't throw items away and its sale value is negative.

* ''[[Fable]]'' also lets the player character drink, with approximately the same effect. He'll even throw up if he gets smashed enough.

* The Mac RPG ''[[Task Maker]]'' has the Skeleton Scroll and Depressions scroll, both of which temporarily deplete some of the player's stats. Devil's Scroll even goes so far as to decrease the overall value of each stat.

 

 

* PSN/Steam shooter ''[[Soldner-X]]: Himmelssturmer'' has a bonus icon which instantly destroys your ship. In a game already [[Nintendo Hard]] and with sharply limited extra lives, [[Fake Difficulty|its presence is most unwelcome.]]

 

 

* In ''[[Lost in Blue]]'', there are eight different kinds of mushrooms that you can find. Their effects differ from game to game; some will burn your throat and thus make your thirst meter go down faster, some will keep your energy meter from going down, some will induce stomachaches, and some will do nothing.

 

 

* In the original ''[[Metal Gear]]'', [[Drugs Are Bad|the cigarettes kill you]].

** Unless you use them at the end of the game, which somehow increases the [[Timed Mission]] timer.

 

 

* The Whiskey in ''[[Alone in The Dark]] 2'' will mess you up big time (and make the game [[Unwinnable]]) if you drink it. Instead, you have to give it to a certain guy to obtain a Santa Suit, which is critical for entering the house without arousing suspicion ([[Guide Dang It]]).

** "Fragments from the Book of Abdul" and "De Vermis Mysteriis" in the first game. The first book drains your health, the second kills you immediately {{spoiler|unless you read them while standing on a very specific spot in a secret room.}}

 

 

* In the third-person shooter ''Wild Guns'' there's the Mystery Power-Up (a bullet with a "?" next to it). While you can still get every gun in the game (Shot Gun, Grenade Gun and Machine Gun), woe onto you if you get the dreadful ''Pea Shooter'', which doesn't do ''any'' harm to your enemies and which you must discharge completely before you can switch back to your standard infinite-ammoed gun.

 

 

* ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]] 2'' had the Tax Lien (Makes you lose gold every day), the Hideous Mask (Monsters will never join you), and the Fizbin of Misfortune (Ruins your morale). You can see them on the map and avoid them, but sometimes you'd find them in treasure chests with no warning.

** The Fizbin is at least as old as ''[[Might and Magic]] 3'' (not the "Heroes of" strategy series, but the apparently-lesser-known RPGs), where it doubled shop prices. It also eradicated you in the Slithercult Saloon if you had it in your inventory and tried one of the slot machines. However, with it you can take a treasure hoard you couldn't otherwise.

 

 

* In the game ''[[Way of the Samurai]] 2'', the rice ball restores 200 HP, the ''rotten'' rice ball costs you 200 (it can't kill you, but it does come very unpleasant in the middle of a heated battle). The difference? Color and description, but who would read it in a battle? Furthermore, most thugs drop this and the real variety. The safer alternative is to just go for better health item, such as the (so-described non-perishable) dried fish, yum.

* ''[[Bully (video game)|Bully]]'' features a game-within-a-game called ''Consumo'', where the character attempts to become larger by eating the random food objects that fly across the screen. Eating rotten food objects such as spoiled rice, fish bones, or apple cores will cause the character to become sick and lose health or even lives.

 

 

 

* In the ''[[Lone Wolf]]'' series of gamebooks the hero can gather quite a few items; some useful, others not so much. And then there are the items that will make Lone Wolf's adventure harder down the line (or outright ''kill'' him) if he was dumb enough to pick them up. These items ''usually'' have very ''evil'' sounding names to warn the player that they're better off leaving them alone. One of the earliest examples in the series is {{spoiler|the Glowing Crystal}} from Book 3 {{spoiler|which is actually one of the [[Artifact of Doom|Doomstones]]}}. Ironically enough, due to Dever's attempts to make the series more balanced, the ''[[Infinity+1 Sword|Sommerswerd]]'' can act like a [[Poison Mushroom]]; making Lone Wolf's life harder than it would be if he didn't bring it with him [[Nintendo Hard|(especially in Books 9 and 11)]].

 

 

* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'': Several campaigns feature poison found in a treasure haul, in addition to your regular potions. Characters that drank it suffered anything from hit point damage to outright death if they failed their saving throw.

** Classic cursed items in D&D included weapons and armor that gave AC and to-hit-and-damage ''penalties'' instead of bonuses, such as a -1 sword or a suit of -2 armor. Naturally, once you equipped them, you couldn't take them off or otherwise be rid of them until a mage or cleric could cast a Remove Curse, Dispel Evil or other such spell on you. Not to speak of the various other major cursed items you could run across (see [[Baldur's Gate]] above for more examples).

 

 

* The ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh (Tabletop Game)|Yu-Gi-Oh]]'' card game has "Parasite Paracide," which gets inserted into the opponent's deck, face-up. When they draw it, they take damage.

 

 

* In ''[[Fluxx]]'', some expansions (the first being ''Zombie Fluxx'') have "Creeper" cards. These are like the negative version of "Keeper" cards - they have to be immediately played, and they prevent the holder from winning the game even if they otherwise meet the conditions for winning (unless the goal specifically allows it or calls for a Creeper).